You Could ALMOST Be A Full Time Hat Maker For Valve

Or perhaps not, but you certainly got a good chunk of change! At Valve’s Dev Days conference, the company revealed just how much, and how far, their community creators have come in just three short years.

More than US$10 million dollars has been paid out to community creators—the people who render and then try to get Valve to put in their stuff into games such as Hat Simulator Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2—last year. That math works out to about $15,000 per-person on average. Generally, that should be enough to get most people by.

While not everyone is naturally going to get that kind of cash—The Verge’s interview with Valve Head Honco Gabe Newell has Gabe quoted as saying some Steam Workshop creators are earning big bucks, but probably not all of them—it does make for a compelling argument on “If you build it they will come”. And buy hats. Many, many hats.

If anything, the numbers seem to bear out that Valve’s big gamble on giving money to creators to actively generate content for their games is paying off in spades. Team Fortress 2, after all, is a six-year-old game now and was the first ever game to begin the offering. Now, said Valve, some 90% of their items come from the community. That’s staggering (And scary).

You realize that there are entire countries where people get by with less than two dollars a day, right? The world doesn’t just consist of Amuricans.

Xerain

It’s definitely possible. I’ve gotten by on that much, without welfare. Granted, I did not have health insurance, which is no longer an option. (And my situation is different now, as I’m back in school.)

The cost of living is not consistent across the country. I happen to live someplace were the rent is very low. Now if only I could make the kind of money they make on the coast while only paying ~$400 a month in rent for a nice 1 bedroom apartment.

Anewme…Again

Outside of big city you can get by with $15,000 almost everywhere.

愛憎

I can get by on that much in the most expensive city in the world, so that’s definitely not true.

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